Is there such a thing? I’ve always wondered whether Google’s organic search algorithm factors in clickthrough rate (CTR) and SERP ranking (normalised) to provide a quality score for organic listings.
This is similar to how Google Adwords’ quality score works. The higher CTR you have and normalising it against the ad position gives you a higher quality score which translates into lower CPC bid. This is how Google rewards advertisers that focus on quality and relevancy instead of just pure bidding.
The understanding is that the better optimised your text ad is (relevancy) for the actual search query and the bid term, the higher CTR you’ll receive which means searchers are taking an action and making a decision (i.e. they’ve found what they’re looking for!).
This in turn rewards Google as well because they’ve provided quality advertisements from advertisers and thus, more people continue using Google and more revenue is made through CPC ads.
So the question is, does this theory of quality score from Adwords apply to organic rankings? If I optimise my site so that it gets equal or higher CTR than what the average is for the SERP position, in Google’s eyes, is my site more relevant to the user thus rewarding my site with a higher ‘quality score’ and a higher quality score means my site would generally rank higher/better for the theme surrounding the search query?
There’s been some research done on what are the CTR distributions on the 1st page of Google’s SERP. Below is a graph compiled by SEO Scientist showing various research data conducted by Eye Tracking and AOL.
Another study done by Searchlight Digital shows CTR distribution of the first page of Google shows somewhat similar results. I haven’t really gone through the references yet of these two sites so please take it with a grain of salt :)
So for example, it seems like 9th position on Google attracts around 2-3% of clicks. What if my website’s average was like 4-5%? Would that mean my site has high relevancy to what users are looking for and thus, should move up the rankings based on relevancy?
Google’s focus (I think anyways) has always been to provide the most relevant search results to users which makes sense to increase rankings for sites that attract a higher CTR than usual.
So how do you optimise your site listing to maximise CTR? I guess there are only 2 on-page elements which you can play around with: the title and meta description. Everyone in the SEO industry knows that the title element is the most important on-page factor for organic rankings but do you know that meta descriptions do not affect organic rankings?
However, it doesn’t mean we should neglect meta descriptions as they do affect CTR. I always treat meta descriptions as your sales pitch or your teaser to entice users to click through to your site. There’s a great blog post by Google Webmaster on how to improve your meta descriptions.
By default, Google looks for the meta description to display in the SERPs but if not found, either scans the page for relevant information or retrieves the description from DMOZ (if listed there).
Would be keen to know what your thoughts are on this topic.